Okey Ndibe – New Nigerian Politicshttp://newnigerianpolitics.com
A New kind of PoliticsFri, 22 Feb 2019 03:58:41 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.12http://newnigerianpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/logo_new_draft_April23_NNP-50x50.jpgOkey Ndibe – New Nigerian Politicshttp://newnigerianpolitics.com
3232Opinion: Political Madmen And Specialists – By Okey Ndibehttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2015/02/24/opinion-political-madmen-and-specialists-by-okey-ndibe/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2015/02/24/opinion-political-madmen-and-specialists-by-okey-ndibe/#respondWed, 25 Feb 2015 04:21:55 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=40487Even at the tamest of times, Nigeria can be an infuriating address. In an election season, it becomes maddening, a space where nothing is sacred any more. Lies, which are often the politicians favorite currency, enter a festering phase. Tall tales are traded across partisan divides. In the age of the Internet, where the most mendacious of claims needs a mere click to travel all over the globe, overzealous party apparatchiks and hirelings thrive, waxing with perverse energy. Every imaginable lieand many unimaginable onesare manufactured and put into circulation. The credulous and gullible appear always in large supply, always at the ready, always willing to gulp down the latest confection of a new kind of professional: the liar-for-hire.

These hired liars accuse their masters opponents of suffering from anything from kwashiorkor to cancer, and heap allegations of all kinds of moral lapses and crimes on their targets, a menu that frequently includes addiction to bleaching, obsession with cultism, engagement in adultery and fornication as well as sponsorship of terrorists.

Its a madcap orgy of lies, but theres a method to the madness. It lies in a careful game of obfuscation. If all these verbal brickbats were not being hurled across partisan lines, why, people would expectperhaps even demandthat each politician or party provide clear plans as well as specify the roadmap to implementation.

Neither the madmen who are our ostensible saviors nor the hirelings who serve as their specialists would permit anything as unpredictable and treacherous as a civil political atmosphere to reign. For a climate of sobriety would then provoke people to seek what politicians are hardly ever capable of offering: a dissection of the current malaise and a blueprint for redemptive action.

Nigeria approaches the 2015 general elections in an atmosphere that could not be more fractious, more terrifying, more fraught with dire prospects. The alignment of political factors and tendencies strikes me as perfect for an explosion. Sectarian sentiments are often volatile even without mischievous people stoking the fires of religion.

In 2015, desperate politicians and their army of hired hands have turned religion into a macabre plaything. In many quarters, the impression has taken root that the elections represent a referendum on which religion would triumph or become triumphal, which subsume or subjugate its fellows.

Its windfall season for crooked pastors and imams. These traders with Gods name are having a field day. Some of them, boasting nothing less than direct telephone contact with heaven, are seeking Gods face for one candidate or another. Daily, Nigerian newspapers and online sites report divine revelations to one man or woman of God or another about the winners and losers in the coming elections.

But all that is the innocuous, harmless stuff. In fact, if Nigeria did not have a particularly violent history of sectarian conflict, one might have found residual entertainment in the profusion of disparate, conflicting messages said to be issuing from divinity. But the game, even at this level, is no laughing matter. And we certainly cannot afford hilarity when many politicians, through their Christian or Islamic clerical proxies, are manipulating religion in more dangerous ways.

Many of these clerics have turned prophets of perdition. They specialize in filling their audiences heads with doomsday predictions in the event of victory by this or that party, or this or that candidate. Thanks to their labors, the elections have become, in the estimation of many, a veritable duel between religions, between faiths, between clashing notions of divinity. Elections in Nigeria always ignite a fire; religion often throws fuel into that fire. The current climate of bellicosity suggests that, unless moderate-minded religious leaders and enlightened citizens awake to the lurking danger and act to counteract the exploitation of religion for political purposes, this may well be the year when the sectarian fuel makes a conflagration of things.

The sheer toxicity pervading Nigerias political air also finds expression in ethnic and geo-political channels. The circumstances have never been better to trigger an issue-based, programmatic conversation about Nigerias future. Yet, the political parties and their candidatesat any rate, the PDP and APChave been content to traffic in generalities and the clichés. Political debate has revolved around such vaporous phrases as moving the nation forward (a spurious statement, a, because Nigeria is far from being a nation, and, b, because it does not answer the question, forward into what?) and delivering the dividends of democracy (a phrase, I suggest, that ought to be banished from the public arena on account of its fatuousness).

Even more troubling than the reluctance to engage at the level of ideas and issues is the polarizing accent of entitlement that defines the presidential race. Many who champion President Goodluck Jonathan insist that, regardless of his performance, he is entitled to a second term in office, if possible by hook or crook. In fact, ex-Niger Delta militants have made veiled and open threats to shut down oil production in the event of Mr. Jonathans defeat.

In similar vein, many political figures from the northern geopolitical space contend that political power must fall in the hands of somebody from their zone. This claim trumps and supersedes any argument about competence and vision.

A highly articulate friend sent me an email last week in response to my column, an argument for Nigerias cultivation of strong institutions instead of the persistent search for the elusive strong, messianic leader. First and foremost, this friend argued, Nigeria needs to be restructured in a way that translates its federalism into a matter of practicenot a mere verbal claim. And he suggested that, unless the countrys structural character is put on the agenda and resolved soon, many more Nigerians lives may be sacrificed to the ostrich game that pretends that everything is settled.

Its a cogent argument, one that I have essayed to make numerous times. I always start from the premise that Nigeriaas Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and many others have statedhas yet to be founded. I also stipulate that theres nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. As an idea, it is up for grabs. It is up to Nigerians to decide whether they wish to coexistand on what termsor live apart. That question has always been an essential one. Today, the question has acquired even greater urgency.

Its silly to persist in the fiction that Nigeria is non-negotiable. If anything, nothing else will fall right unlessor untilNigerians negotiate their relationship. Read any online website, see the way Nigerians savage one another, and realize that we are NOT a family. Too many Nigerians regard those of their number from other faiths, ethnicities or states as sub-humanor worse. Those who pretend that Nigeria cannot be subjected to scrutiny are often profiteers from the confused, amorphous and anomalous state of the country.

Which brings me to the crux of the cult of mad people and their specialists. If Nigerian politics is shorn of issues and devoid of ideological anchor, it is because, in the final analysis, those who quest for political power are jostling for position to help themselves to the largest pieces of the national cake.

Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe

(okeyndibe@gmail.com)

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2015/02/24/opinion-political-madmen-and-specialists-by-okey-ndibe/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:69:"political,nigeria,religion,elections,it’s,nigerians,people,argument";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";i:1;s:11:"description";s:157:"political atmosphere to reign. For a climate of sobriety would then provoke people to seek what politicians are hardly ever capable of offering: a dissection";s:22:"description_autoupdate";i:1;s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}“Okey Ndibe Fumbles Again” – A rejoinderhttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2014/12/20/okey-ndibe-fumbles-again-a-rejoinder/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2014/12/20/okey-ndibe-fumbles-again-a-rejoinder/#respondSat, 20 Dec 2014 23:31:24 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=39776By Remi Oyeyemi

One has just read the vituperations of our friend, Mr. Igbokwe against Professor Okey Ndibe. Mr. Igbokwe is very upset that Prof. Ndibe did not see any difference between his All Progressive Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Igbokwe was really riled that such a comparison could be made at all and he went to town screaming like a gong beater grateful for being allowed to yell. He titled his tirade “Okey Ndibe Fumbles Again.” Mr Igbokwe’s tirades sounded more, without doubt, like the rantings of a servile.

While I must admit that I have had my disagreements with Professor Okey Ndibe over a variety of issues in the past, on this one, he is on the money. He is right and very correct. There is no difference whatsoever between the APC and the PDP. Rather than Okey fumbling, it is Igbokwe that is being intellectually dishonest and deceptive to Nigerians. It is evident that Igbokwe is trying to earn his pay from his masters. Just like his masters, he is being diabolical and showing no respect for the truth. He is a professional obfuscator. His obvious disdain for honesty is very abhorrent. Spreading lies and deceit seem to be his trade. Double-speaking is his guideline. His dubious righteous indignation is an insult to the intelligence of the rest of us who know this to be self evident TRUTH – there is no difference whatsoever between the PDP and the APC.

Igbokwe wrote inter alia:

“Each time Professor Okey Ndibe and Chido Onuma (two writers I respect so much) write about political parties, elections, ideologies, philosophical principles, the duo always tells us that APC and PDP are the same. This is one lie they have been telling those who care to listen and the danger is that when you tell these lies a thousand times gullible people may believe it as true”

If Igbokwe is not an obfuscator, a paid and compromised megaphone, he would not write the above. If he is not the one spreading lies to Nigerians, he has to explain to us what the Atikus, Tambuwals, Nyakos, Amaechis, Barajes and the rest of them are doing in the APC? Or was he in Russia when Atiku was the PDP Vice President for 8 years in Nigeria? Even those in Russia could not have claimed ignorance of that fact, not to talk of a so-called politician in Nigeria! Apart from that, Abubakar Atiku is a man who appeared to be strongest in picking up the APC presidential ticket right now.

Let us leave defections and talk about ideology. What is the ideology of the APC as compared to the PDP? What are the policy differences between the PDP and the APC? What are the differences in principle between the APC and the PDP? Is Atiku who is an American Certified and Wanted Fraudster and a former PDP better than say, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, PDP governor of Delta State? In what way is APC’s Murtala Nyako, a certified pedophile and concentrated kleptomaniac and PDP’s alleged serial killer in Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue different in principle? Or did Igbokwe forget that documents revealed that the 10 billion naira allegedly stolen by former PDP Speaker Dimeji Bankole was reportedly shared amongst himself, APC’s Tambuwal and others? Is Tambuwal not one of the leading lights of the APC now? Is PDP’s Olusegun Obasanjo, the man who installed President Goodluck Jonathan not the new godfather of APC’s Bola Tinubu as we speak? What is the difference between APC’s Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and PDP’s Aliyu Babangida of Niger State? Igbokwe has to come out and tell us.

Then Igbokwe went further and made laborious effort to differentiate between PDP and the APC as follows:

“APC believes in politics with principle, PDP believes in politics without principle. APC believes in work before wealth but PDP believes in wealth without work. APC believes that power goes with responsibility but PDP believes in power without responsibility. APC believes that things can be done differently in Nigeria but PDP believes in the maintenance of status quo ante. While PDP plays ethnic and religious politics, dividing Nigerians to remain in power, APC believes that Nigeria remains a secular state where every religion is respected.”

As pointed out above, the APC is not different from the PDP in any way. Talking about principles, ideology, work before getting rich, power with responsibility warts and all, the APC is even worse in some situations. There are fraudsters in the PDP. They abound two-fold in APC. There are kleptomaniacs in PDP. The kleptomaniacs in the APC even have no blood flowing in their veins. There are murderers in PDP. The ones in APC are more cold blooded and ruthless. There are drug runners and barons in PDP. The drug runners and barons in APC are certified. There are Certificate forgers in PDP. The Certificate forgers in the APC are even more famous and dexterous. There are money launderers in PDP. The money launderers in the APC are much savvier. The PDP at times makes a pretence about its impunities. The APC leadership is even more blatant and flagrant in its impunities. The vampires in the PDP only operate at night because of the effect of daylight, but the vanpires in the APC operate at all times regardless of daylight or not. So, where lays the difference between APC and the PDP? Igbokwe should come out and tell us something that is believable.

Igbokwe then embarked on nauseating inanities against Professor Ndibe as follows:

“Now, beyond reciting the idle and unintelligent credo of ‘all of them use thugs’ and all what not, when will Okey begin to inquest why and how Nigeria ended up the way it is today under PDP’s watch for sixteen years? Or does he want us to also agree that APC is responsible for the prostrate state of Nigeria today? When will Okey ask what happened to the monumental windfall from oil for sixteen years? When will he ask why Nigeria got broke just few weeks after the fall of crude price, even with the price still remaining within the budget benchmark? When will Okey ask what happened to the excess crude account that we are so helpless today? When will Okey ask what happened to the Sovereign Wealth Fund with the high falutin promises that were woven to midwife it? When will Okey ask of the infrastructures the PDP built with sixteen years oil boom in his eagerness to lump APC into PDP failings?”

To Mr. Igbokwe, expressing the obvious fact that “all of them use thugs” is “idle and unintelligent credo” of those who are fed up with the violence of the APC and the PDP on the Nigerian political landscape. One should not be surprised at this kind of position by Mr. Igbokwe because he is one of the sponsors of the thugs that perpetrate violence on our society in the name of politics. When he is not aiding and abetting his masters in this odious venture of using thugs, he is on the social media manifesting signs of intellectual palsy, spewing inanities, engaging in ad hominem debate and nauseating shenanigans. The more flabbergasting aspect of Igbokwe’s obnoxious behaviour is that he is more brazen, unpretentious and shameless about his double speak, hypocrisy and dishonesty.

It is preposterous for Mr. Igbokwe to suggest that Professor Ndibe has not been asking the right questions about the socio-economic and political calamities that have been visited on Nigeria. He has been doing that for a long time. You may disagree with Professor Ndibe’s analysis or question his conclusions, as I have done several times, but you cannot take it from him that he is genuinely concerned about the invalid country called Nigeria. While the Igbokwes of this world have engaged in conscienceless carpetbaggerism, making money out of the misery of others, aiding and abetting the looters of our commonwealth and shamelessly engaging in deliberate obfuscation of issues and confusing the critical mass of our people, the Ndibes of this world have been asking questions and proffering solutions in the best way they know how. The integrity and dignity that the Ndibes of this world have is obviously the envy of the Igbokwes of this world who are political jobbers and contaminators of our social and political space.

The only half truth contained in that diatribe against Professor Ndibe by Mr. Igbokwe is contained in the following:

“Our so called intellectuals have keyed and have been slaving to explain away the indiscretions of our leaders and their profligacy. Either because we are lazy or we are intellectually compromised, we have laid back like willing sluts and have taken the umbrage of our so called leaders.”

Yes he is right that our “so called intellectuals have keyed and have been slaving to explain away the indiscretions of our leaders and their profligacy.” He is right because this is what Igbokwe and his ilk are doing. Igbokwe and his type are the ones that are intellectually justifying falsehood, deceiving our people, calling born-again devils the saints of our time. They see white and they seek to convince the rest of us that it is black. They see certificate forgers, and call them heroes. They see thieves and call them the noveaux -riche. They see political racketeers and profiteers and call them political juggernauts. They see hooligans and moral reprobates and call them leaders. They see the dregs of our society, deodorize them and call them paragon of virtues.

As Igbokwe rightly pointed out, the “lazy” approach of the genre of Igbokwes of this world stemmed from the fact that they are “intellectually compromised.” But unfortunately for Igbokwe, Okey Ndibe is not one of them. He does not belong to that class of crass opportunists, political jobbers, professional obfuscators and servile gong men. Between the Igbokwes of this world and the Ndibes of this world, the difference is crystal clear, unlike the Nigerian Siamese twins of conglomerate of political evil doers – the PDP and the APC!

In my own estimation, the APC is even worse in several ways more than one than the PDP. But Nigerians do not have to choose between these two evils if they have the courage to change their own fortunes come February 2015. There are several options out there including breaking up this God-forsaken country, an option to which Professor Ndibe does not even agree, regardless of the fact that such considerations had crossed his mind before given his writings. But Igbokwe should desist from taking the rest of us for granted and stop insulting our intelligence.

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2014/12/20/okey-ndibe-fumbles-again-a-rejoinder/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:53:"pdp,apc,igbokwe,ndibe,okey,believes,nigeria,political";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";i:1;s:11:"description";s:157:"PDP. Rather than Okey fumbling, it is Igbokwe that is being intellectually dishonest and deceptive to Nigerians. It is evident that Igbokwe is trying to earn";s:22:"description_autoupdate";i:1;s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}What Anambra Says – By Okey Ndibehttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/12/03/what-anambra-says-by-okey-ndibe/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/12/03/what-anambra-says-by-okey-ndibe/#respondTue, 03 Dec 2013 17:12:58 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=33703Okey Ndibe | Connecticut, USA | Dec. 3., 2013 – Numerous political pundits stipulated that the recent governorship election in Anambra would serve as a gauge of things to come in the 2015 general elections. Anambra, these pundits suggested, would have a lot to say about the place and direction of Nigeria. If that projection was sound, then we have many reasons to be uneasy.

Last week’s declaration of Willie Obiano of the All Peoples Grand Alliance (APGA) as the governor-elect was, in the end, beside the point. Regardless of the outcome of the election, I believe that the process itself was deeply flawed. It left me disheartened.

It may well be that Mr. Obiano would still have emerged victorious in an election that was unquestionably transparent and technically efficient. In that event, he is entitled to a sense of outrage that the election was attended by significant irregularities. Any candidate in a major political race deserves the sense of legitimacy that comes from a process that is glitch-free. It is hard to claim that the Anambra governorship contest met that standard.

The governor-elect’s luck – if luck be the word – is that he operates in a Nigerian system where ever-elastic allowances are made for procedural impropriety. In 2001, George W. Bush became the 43rd president of the United States of America after a majority of US Supreme Court justices handed him victory in a ruling that many viewed as ill-considered at best or even a scandal of judicial overreach. Throughout his first term in office – and for much of the second as well – Mr. Bush labored under a sometimes debilitating cloud. Many of his liberal critics cast question marks on his legitimacy.

As I argued two weeks ago, INEC’s performance in the Anambra governorship election was deplorable. Despite the dramatic build-up to the election, voter turnout was embarrassingly low. Many voters discovered their names missing from voter registers. Electoral documents arrived terribly late, and sometimes not at all, in many polling centers. In much of Idemili, where voting did not hold at all, INEC sustained a black eye. Last weekend’s supplementary election was a poor palliative for a veritable fiasco.

Looking at what transpired in Anambra, Nigerians who hold out hope for credible elections in 2015 ought to be afraid, very afraid. If INEC could not acquit itself creditably in Anambra, if INEC officials were unable to handle the logistics of a governorship in just one of Nigeria’s 36 states, then the prospects of the commission conducting credible elections all over the country in 2015 are suspect, to speak in mild terms.

The full meaning of what happened in Anambra’s November polls won’t become clear for some time. Some of the losing candidates have alleged that what took place was a case of “high-tech” rigging. Some defenders of the outcome have countered that the criticisms exemplify an inelegant habit of being sour losers. Other apologists suggest that all the major political parties were implicated in rigging, and that the final result merely reflected the victorious party’s dominance in a widely practiced art.

Each contention is disturbing. Any form of rigging, low- or hi-tech, ought to give us pause. Let’s never forget that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Nigerians perished in the struggle to enthrone voting as the default mode for choice of public office holders. Why, in the name of decency, do we accept malpractices that bastardize elections?

Some Nigerians rationalize electoral fraud by asserting that no system is perfect. They forget that the argument is hardly ever about perfection. It is about grave, glaring defects that are deliberately built in, designed to thwart voters’ will. It’s doubtful that any Nigerian election since 1999 has passed muster. It’s often hard to look at any occupant of political office in Nigeria and assert, with a degree of confidence, that s/he won in a clean way.

The argument that all political parties are invested in rigging is just as tenuous. It’s an argument calculated to perpetuate the political party with control of the machineries of state power. Rigging anywhere is wrong. Yet, the reason critics often focus on and flay the PDP’s rigging is that the ruling party is able to commandeer the coercive powers of the state to aid its candidates. The party of the Nigerian president often marshals soldiers, the police, officers of the State Security Service (SSS), and even INEC officials as agents of rigging. The rigging system is decisively rigged for the ruling party.

The stakes in the Anambra governorship had national repercussions. It was the first time that the APC, through its candidate Chris Ngige, tested out its viability in a high-profile electoral contest. Without question, President Goodluck Jonathan’s ambition for re-election in 2015 was a potent factor in the election. Mr. Jonathan and the PDP’s singular interest in the Anambra election was to ensure that the APC’s Mr. Ngige did not win. In that respect, the PDP’s mission intersected with that of APGA.

Like most elections in Nigeria, the Anambra governorship campaign was bereft of ideas. In the end, the candidates, their sponsors and champions mostly traded slurs. Substantive issues pertaining to strategies for addressing the state’s myriad crises were given short shrift. The voter who sought illumination of the central issues that bear on Anambra’s problems and problems was abandoned to his fog. There is no reason to expect that ideas will suddenly become important in 2015.

With the deepening fissure in the PDP, Mr. Jonathan must scavenge for a formula to win the 2015 election. With an achievement profile that is evidently unimpressive, the Nigerian president has no choice other than deploying the apparati of state power. How much of the mess in Anambra’s election was a product of such manipulation, and how much a demonstration of INEC’s sheer incompetence?

Mr. Obiano is bound to face extensive legal challenge. If he triumphs – and the history of judicial rulings place the odds in his favor – then he faces the much tougher test of governance. Anambra has been terribly unlucky in its governors. The sordid shape of Awka, the state capital, continues to serve as a symbol of the mediocrity of the state’s leadership. One of the incoming governor’s most pressing tasks is to commence the urgent job of cleaning up the eyesore that is the Anambra State capital. And that governor must tackle insecurity, unemployment, and education.

My novel, Foreign Gods, Inc. will be published on January 14, 2014. Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/12/03/what-anambra-says-by-okey-ndibe/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:61:"election,anambra,rigging,2015,governorship,mr,political,state";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";i:1;s:11:"description";s:159:"election in Anambra would serve as a gauge of things to come in the 2015 general elections. Anambra, these pundits suggested, would have a lot to say about the";s:22:"description_autoupdate";i:1;s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}Okey Ndibe: A case for canceling the 2015 electionshttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/05/28/okey-ndibe-a-case-for-canceling-the-2015-elections/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/05/28/okey-ndibe-a-case-for-canceling-the-2015-elections/#respondWed, 29 May 2013 00:25:14 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=30443Once again, Nigeria has entered an awful, familiar season. The country’s air is rent with talk of power. Not electric power, no; we’re talking raw political power! And the general elections of 2015 seem to have concentrated the mind of every politician in Nigeria, incumbent and aspirant alike.

Nigeria is gravely tense. The country’s political rope has become extremely taut, threatening to snap. I’d suggest that Nigeria cancel the 2015 elections.

The country should then be put in a controlled comatose state, ready for the commencement of urgent, critical care.

First, let me offer a sketch of the country’s pathologies. Nigeria is beset by myriad crises. Boko Haram continues to make life in parts of the country nasty, brutish and short. After a few years of relative quiet, the creeks of the Niger Delta are flaring with sporadic acts of violence, much of them directed at police officers.

Other parts of the country are in the vice grip of kidnappers who, when it suits them, murder their quarry even after ransom is paid. Businesses and individuals face a bad – some argue, worsening – state of electric power supply.

The streets of many (I suspect, most) Nigerian cities are rife with clogged, fetid gutters that are both eyesores and health scares in-waiting. Hundreds of thousands of university and polytechnic graduates, many of them with cash-acquired or sexually transmitted degrees, haunt the streets, unemployed – some unemployable – and hopeless.

Hospitals are so ill-equipped, so scary, that a good percentage of sick Nigerians now fly to Europe or North America (if they can afford it), or flock to India or South Africa (if they don’t have the means for the top-tier destinations), or make do with Ghana (if all farther locations are too expensive), or head for some money-grubbing, “miracle”-minting pastor or imam.

The road networks are a shambles. And there’s much else that demands fixing – schools; oil bunkering; waste disposal; civil services that are shadows of what they ought to be; a police force that engages in widespread extra-judicial executions; judiciaries so corrupt that Nigerians often resort to self-help rather than take cases to court; large-scale embezzlement of public funds by federal, state and municipal officials – to leave it at that.

Nigeria is the perfect place for any leader who welcomes challenges and wants to apply her/his mind to the solution of deep-rooted problems. In other words, there’s plenty of work crying for tested, serious men and women willing to transform their spaces – not just those ready with a facile phrase or two.

If President Goodluck Jonathan realizes the enormity of the crises in Nigeria, then he has kept it a secret unto himself. He has hardly demonstrated an understanding of what real leadership is all about. In the build-up to the 2011 elections, Candidate Jonathan was a factory of promises and pledges.

Once sworn-in, Mr. Jonathan seemed to ball up all those promises and toss them in a trash bin. It’s as if he split like an ogbanje, the promise-spewing part of him no longer in touch with the snoozing, alienated president he’s become.

On occasion, Mr. Jonathan has shown flashes of an imperial mindset, though not to the same degree as former President Olusegun Obasanjo. At any rate, our man in Aso Rock leaves the impression of being baffled, intimidated by the sheer size and weight of the day-to-day demands of his office – to say nothing of the long term dimensions of Nigeria’s problems.

Like the president, most of the first-term governors have reset their priorities to – re-election. The second-term governors are rearing for their next power move. Some, I understand, are figuring out how to corner a seat in the Senate, a chamber whose members are addressed, with a verbal inflation that’s quintessentially Nigerian, as “Distinguished Senator.” – Others are darting about, cozying up to one presumed presidential player or another, their eyes set on prizes that range from VP through minister to ambassador.

The official line is that Mr. Jonathan hasn’t decided whether to seek re-election. But that line is about as credible as former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s insistence that he never wished for a third term in office.

Unless you’re a political fool or a visitor just come from outer space, you know President Jonathan is desperate to return in 2015. Let’s be clear: he has a right – under the constitution – to run. So do the governors seeking re-election, coveting a vice presidential nomination or eyeing a legislative post. I think it was former dictator Ibrahim Babangida who once mused that Nigeria’s continued survival defied logic. But even the hardiest of resilient entities finally reach a breaking point. I fear that Nigeria is hurtling to its breaking point – in 2015.

Almost two years before the next round of elections, we’ve witnessed a ratcheting up of violent rhetoric. Mr. Jonathan’s acolytes, Asari Dokubo and Kingsley Kuku chief among them, have threatened Armageddon unless their man was allowed to shamble through another four-year lap. Some Northern politicians have served notice that hell would be unleashed if Mr. Jonathan did not abandon his dreams of residing in the presidential villa beyond 2015.

The threats strike me as real, for both sides have the resume – as well as the wherewithal – to deliver on their warring words. With a wretched legacy to his name, Mr. Jonathan must depend on manipulating the powers of incumbency – rigging – to win.

Bereft of vision and too lazy to articulate a set of viable answers for Nigeria’s maladies, the forces opposed to the president are counting on out-rigging him. It’s all a perfect recipe for certain disaster. Some of us think that the current climate of insecurity in Nigeria is absolutely unsustainable.

I shudder to imagine the post-2015 scenario. Nigerians may not be able to bear – should not bear – the burden of yet another clash of naked ambitions. Neither President Jonathan nor the Northerners who want his job nor the coalition of opposition forces has shown any indication of possessing an antidote to Nigeria’s complex of problems.

All of them seek political power, it seems, for its own sake. Let me correct that statement. They appear to share a dream: to preside over the unabated dispossession of the Nigerian people. Nigeria is highly combustible, ripe – at the slightest instigation – for horrific bloodletting. Were the global mood and circumstances different, today’s Nigeria would be a prime candidate for a coup d’etat.

That such an occurrence is unfeasible has not stopped some Nigerians from fantasizing about military intervention, conveniently forgetting the horrors that came with such past military incursions. The fact is that a coup is highly unlikely, above all because the international community is now highly allergic to uniformed poseurs who seize power.

I recommend what amounts to a “self-help” coup, a dismantling of the dismal apparatus that we have misnamed democracy.

Here’s a quick outline. President Jonathan, the 36 state governors, and the municipal councils should stay in office till 2015. Instead of holding elections that are bound to be economically wasteful and massively rigged, there should be a convocation of vital interest groups in the country – labor, students, the military, religious leaders, professional groups (doctors, lawyers, accountants, academics etc).

The body should be mandated to invite experts from different fields to assume control of various sectors of the country – health, education, sanitation, the judiciary, security, infrastructure, and so on. Each of the thirty-six states should also have such arrangement. The caretaker administrators, chosen on the basis of expertise alone, should run Nigeria for a minimum of ten years.

The first five years should be devoted to designing and building a truly modern Nigeria, complete with enlightened citizens. During the next five years, the caretakers should begin to draw up a draft constitution that contains noble ideals and expunges such oddities in the extant constitution as “security vote” and immunity for crime-committing governors and presidents.

I’m afraid, really afraid of what lurks in the corner if we bumble into 2015 determined to hold elections when – as usual – no contending party (least of all the ruling one) is contemplating playing by honest rules. I fear, then, that the alternative to a caretaker arrangement is to have a blood-soaked Nigeria in the hands of undertakers.

* Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2013/05/28/okey-ndibe-a-case-for-canceling-the-2015-elections/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:58:"nigeria,jonathan,president,2015,mr,power,elections,country";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";i:1;s:11:"description";s:159:"Nigeria has entered an awful, familiar season. The country's air is rent with talk of power. Not electric power, no; we're talking raw political power! And the";s:22:"description_autoupdate";i:1;s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}Ojukwu: A Titan Who Won’t Die – By Okey Ndibehttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/11/29/ojukwu-a-titan-who-won%e2%80%99t-die-by-okey-ndibe/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/11/29/ojukwu-a-titan-who-won%e2%80%99t-die-by-okey-ndibe/#respondTue, 29 Nov 2011 07:32:32 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=15206By Okey Ndibe, Connecticut, USA – Nov. 29, 2011 – A telephone call startled me awake at 3:41 a.m. last Saturday. Still gripped by sleep, I fumbled in the darkness until I palmed my phone. “Hello?” I slurred, my tone testy, ready to chide whoever was on the other end for so thoughtlessly interrupting my sleep. The caller was a friend of mine. I was still searching for a mild way to protest when he revealed that he’d just heard that Ikemba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, had died in a UK hospital where he’d been receiving treatment for several months. Had I heard the news, he asked?
Stunned, I told the caller that I needed to make a call to London to ascertain the veracity of the report. By this time, the fog of sleep had cleared, leaving my senses alert, my emotions a topsy-turvy. It took me one call to the UK – to one of Dim Ojukwu’s children – to confirm that the man who led Biafra – and, in several ways, epitomized it – had indeed died.
In life, Ojukwu was at once a spellbinding presence and approachable; he was both charismatic and truly larger than life. One measure of Ojukwu’s stature as a historical figure is that, among those who knew him – or merely knew of him – it’s extremely difficult to meet many who can honestly say they were indifferent to him. No, he inspired adoration or invited disdain; he drew fierce adulation and provoked fulsome hate, but none, friends or foes alike, could ignore him.
The death of such a personage often inspires a clatter of emotional responses from people, especially those who had the fortune of knowing him on a personal level. I was one of those fortunate ones.

As a fledging journalist in Lagos in the mid-1980s, I ran into Ojukwu in Enugu and received an open invitation to drop in at his 29 Queens Drive residence in Ikoyi, Lagos. Sometimes alone, sometimes along with a few colleagues – among them, Nnamdi Obasi and C.Don Adinuba – I’d often visit Ojukwu’s residence with that famous sign at the gate, “Beware of snake”.

Alone or accompanied by others, I’d spend several hours listening as Ojukwu discoursed. At these informal sessions, he’d smoke cigarette after cigarette and sip from his glass of cognac as he weighed in on Nigerian politics. His favorite subject, a theme he returned to again and again, was the failure of the Nigerian state to crystallize anything approaching a clear sense of citizenship. He was troubled that the Nigerian was in no position to affirm that there was any verifiable content to being a citizen.
Of course, Ojukwu was not alone in articulating that specific malady, that contradiction that easily betrays the hollowness at the heart of Nigeria’s claim to being a meaningful community and coherent idea. What made his voice urgent and lent poignancy to his stipulations was, apart from his uncommon prowess as a speaker, his stature as the man who led a war to resolve that contradiction. There was something heartrending, then, about the experience of sitting with Ojukwu as he eloquently, piquantly, and ruefully demonstrated that Nigeria had embarked on a ruinous war, but had failed – despite the sacrifice of more than a million lives – to address the central question that had triggered the war.

A few months into these informal exchanges, Ojukwu agreed to grant his first extensive interview since returning from exile to the African Guardian, the now defunct weekly magazine that I worked for at the time. One bitingly sunny afternoon, a team of us from the magazine – Editor Ted Iwere, senior correspondent Kingsley Osadalor, and I – spent several hours asking questions that ran the gamut of his life as a historian, soldier, war leader, exile, and refreshed Nigerian. What emerged from that encounter were two paradoxical, but far from inconsistent, considerations. One was Ojukwu’s declaration of his readiness to go to war in order to preserve the unity of Nigeria. The other was his insistence that Nigeria as a nation had not come to terms with its meaning, that its constituent elements had not hashed out the terms of their engagement, and that the country had yet to take seriously the redemption of its implicit pledge to all citizens, especially erstwhile Biafrans.

In the heady flush of emotions after his death, there are those who would leave the impression that Ojukwu was beloved by all Igbo. That impression fudges the evidence. No, he was no object of universal acclaim. Like all great men – and he was a great man in all the ways that count – he was too complex to command everybody’s affection. Many despised the haste with which, once home from exile, he entered the partisan political fray on the side of the widely unpopular National Party of Nigeria, thus seeming to spurn the going political sentiment of most Igbos at the time. He paid a stiff price for that precipitate decision, and seemed to reel from its effect till the very end. I regret that he never took time to offer the world his own written insider’s account of the darkest moments in Nigeria’s history.

Still, nobody would seriously deny that, when his people were tested by fire, he stood up to be counted. Born into privilege on a legendary scale, Ojukwu sacrificed his worldly possessions in the fight to secure a safe space for his beleaguered people. In a Nigeria where relative paupers shoot or rig their ways into office and loot their way out to obscene wealth, here was a man who went in as a leader wealthy and left materially wretched.

That, and his other gifts, among them an inimitable way with language, an uncommon insight into the plight of dispossessed Nigerians, an ability to speak a language that resonates with the downtrodden, a deeply powerful historical acumen, and that incomparable sense of drama – these endowments speak to a titanic personality. Since the death of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and Alhaji Aminu Kano, the Ikemba has given us our closest glimpse of a true leader’s mettle. I’m willing to predict that, with time, his leadership credentials are likely to receive wider appreciation and magnification whilst his flaws slip into insignificance. He’s physically dead, but his spirit will loom, will infuse the hearts of those he touched and whom he allowed to touch him in return. May his soul rest in peace.

Lotachukwu Ezeudu: A Memo to the Police and Prisons

Both the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of Nigerian Prisons ought to take an urgent interest in the sad saga of Lotachukwu Ezeudu, a 19-year-old accountancy student at the University of Nigeria (Enugu campus) who was kidnapped in September, 2009 and has not been seen since. Thanks to the unyielding devotion of young Lota’s parents, the tenacity of police investigators, and the diligence of prosecutors at the Enugu State Ministry of Justice, most of the suspects in Lota’s kidnap have been identified – and arrested.

Even so, certain developments in the case threaten to cause further serious dents to the already terribly tarnished image of the police and prisons.
One of the suspects in Lota’s kidnap is a young man named Uche Moses Amajor. Declared wanted in connection with the case, Moses, whose father is a businessman and the owner of Prosper Hotel in Trans-Ekulu, Enugu, went underground for a year and a half, eluding police investigators. It was only in April this year that his parents finally surrendered him to the police.

And then the story became trickier – in a really sordid, disturbing way. First, one Mahmud Isah, the area commander of the Funtua police in Katsina State, reportedly signed a letter stating that the suspect, Moses Uche Amajor, had come to the station on September 25, 2009 to file a report that armed robbers had stolen various documents from him. If that report were true, then Amajor would have produced proof that he wasn’t in Enugu on September 26, the day Lota was kidnapped. That would have amounted to a perfect alibi.

Except that the investigators in Enugu insist that Moses Amajor was indeed in Enugu and participated in a heinous crime. If their account is true, it follows that, a, perhaps the “alibi” letter from Funtua police was forged (in which event the person who produced the letter ought to be arrested and prosecuted) or, b, that a senior police officer in Funtua consented to give a false statement with the aim of misleading the law and miscarrying justice. That calls for a serious investigation by the IG of Police. If he finds the officer guilty, he must order his immediate firing, arrest and prosecution. Police officers who give cover or comfort to criminals worsen the already bad image of the police and are a menace to society.

Meanwhile, the Inspector-General should also order an investigation into the whereabouts of Sam Chukwu, a Divisional Police Officer (DPO) who has been named as a suspect in the kidnap. On several occasions, Mr. Chukwu has failed to show up in court to face charges. Is it not time the IG ordered a wide search to nab him, wherever he’s hiding?
More recently, a doctor at the Nigeria Prison Service reportedly wrote a statement to the effect that the same Moses Amajor was suffering from hepatitis. The prison doctor then recommended that the suspect be released to seek treatment on his own.
The report is troubling, and not only because prosecutors question its veracity. A man accused of a crime as grave as kidnapping should never be released to fend for himself. If Moses Amajor is infected with hepatitis, the prison authorities ought to put him in solitary confinement to ensure he does not jeopardize others. At any rate, the director general of prisons should order a second set of tests to ensure that the diagnosis of hepatitis is sound – not another attempt by Amajor to dribble his way to freedom.
•Follow me on twitter @ OkeyNdibe

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/11/29/ojukwu-a-titan-who-won%e2%80%99t-die-by-okey-ndibe/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:49:"police,ojukwu,amajor,enugu,nigeria,man,moses,time";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:11:"description";s:155:"Police and Prisons Both the Inspector-General of Police and the Director-General of Nigerian Prisons ought to take an urgent interest in the sad saga of";s:22:"description_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}index,followJega suspends top officials over illegal substitution of candidates’ nameshttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/04/14/jega-suspends-top-officials-over-illegal-substitution-of-candidates%e2%80%99-names/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/04/14/jega-suspends-top-officials-over-illegal-substitution-of-candidates%e2%80%99-names/#respondFri, 15 Apr 2011 03:36:31 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=6548Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has made good his promise not to spare any official of the Commission found to have compromised himself in the course of duties. Consequently, he has descended on the legal department of the Commission and suspended some top officials for allegedly changing illegally, names of party candidates for elections.

One of the officials, a female Assistant Director in the department (names withheld) suspected to be the head of the syndicate, which trades with names of candidates with the use of fictitious court orders has been suspended indefinitely.
Reliable sources at the INEC told Daily Sun that the affected officials were discovered to be behind illegal fiddling with candidates’ lists through incessant changes of names of candidates even when there were no court orders necessitating such.

The officials have been allegedly interrogated by the Police and the operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) following outcries by some candidates whose names were substituted even when their parties did not seek for such or have any problem with their nomination. Daily Sun reliably learnt that the decision by Jega to interdict the affected officials was in line with the reports from the two security agencies indicting them of culpability in illegal substitution of candidates’ names.

When contacted, the INEC Chairman’s Chief Press Secretary, Kayode Idowu denied knowledge of the development saying, “I am not aware.” A Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senatorial candidate in Anambra, Chief John Emeka, had lodged a complain when his name was substituted on the order of a court, which his lawyer was later found to be fake.

It was in the process of investigations that it was discovered that a cartel existed in the Commission which specializes in production of fake court order and INEC stamp. Only two days ago, the INEC Chairman restated his resolve not to spare any staff of the Commission found to have connived with politicians to sabotage the electoral process. Meanwhile, Prof. Jega has appealed to all Nigerains to give his Commission maximum cooperation and endure inconveniences they might arise during the presidential election tomorrow.

He stated that no amount of sacrifice would be too much to ensure that the electoral process was credible. The INEC boss made the appeal while addressing a delegation of the European Election Observation Mission which paid him a courtesy visit at the Abuja Headquarters of the commission yesterday.

On the preparation for the election, he disclosed that the procedures for voting would be strictly complied with, adding that accreditation of voters would be strengthene “Our hope is that the presidential election would be better conducted than what obtained last Saturday. We are committed to strengthening the commission’s logistics,” she said.

In his response, the spokesman of the European Union’s Election Observation Team, Mr Alojz Peterle, a former President of Slovenia said the group was encouraged by the utterances of Prof. Jega, especially his promise that the electoral process would improve with each election.

-Sun

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/04/14/jega-suspends-top-officials-over-illegal-substitution-of-candidates%e2%80%99-names/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:67:"commission,election,inec,names,officials,candidates,court,electoral";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:11:"description";s:153:"Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega has made good his promise not to spare any official of the Commission found to have compromised himself in the";s:22:"description_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}index,followNigeria’s Egypt dreams By Okey Ndibehttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/02/14/nigeria%e2%80%99s-egypt-dreams-by-okey-ndibe/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/02/14/nigeria%e2%80%99s-egypt-dreams-by-okey-ndibe/#respondMon, 14 Feb 2011 22:50:44 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=4250 Pask many a Nigerian what it would take to turn her country around, and you’re likely to get this answer: “Only God can solve the problems of this country.” The evidence so far is that God isn’t impressed. A people with the extraordinary natural resources and variety of human talent that Nigeria boasts has no reason to bother God for anything else.

This is apart from the fact that Nigeria’s crises are man-made, manufactured by the greed and criminal acts of those who pass themselves off as leaders – and often with the tacit connivance or permission of the rest of us. As I stated elsewhere, God is not going to build our roads, sweep Nigerian streets strewn with “pure water” plastic, provide funds for our schools, produce a sound healthcare system, prosecute the “stakeholders” whose specialty is to pocket public funds, restrain electoral officials who aide and abet the stealing of votes by politicians, rewrite the judgments of corrupt judges, edit the reports and opinions of suborned journalists, or stop the police from shooting motorists slow to produce that N20 collection at checkpoints.

When many Nigerians, in searching for a solution for their mess of a country, are compelled to scale back their gaze from divine heights, they are frequently seized by what I call a Jerry Rawlings fantasy. Simply put, this fantasy bears a hope that we would wake up one sunny day to the emergence of a made-in-Nigeria clone of the former Ghanaian military leader who, in an access of rage, tied some of his country’s former leaders to stakes and shot them.
There are Nigerians who (day)dream that some outraged and steely-hearted fellow – their own home-grown Rawlings – would arise from somewhere and, in a volley of bullets, cleanse their country of its execrable past and present misrulers.

Again, the Rawlings fantasy strikes me as a bit like the God solution. Rawlings could emerge in Ghana because certain historical circumstances in his country made him possible. He was a product of the Ghanaian moral and political climate. He arose at a point in Ghanaian history when the country’s humiliation was near-total, the masses of the people were not just dejected but also prepared to contemplate extreme action to reshape their shattered lives and pull themselves from the edge of a chasm.

Rawlings was far from a lone agent of history. He had around him a nucleus of, among others, the intelligentsia, workers, traders and student leaders who shared his idealism and revolutionary fervor.
At any rate, even as Nigerians celebrate Rawlings’ mini killing spree, many Ghanaians – including admirers of Rawlings – have developed a healthy dose of skepticism about that bloodlust. There’s little question that the event had a cathartic effect. In a lot of ways, it has come, unfortunately, to define – or to shadow – the career of a man who is far more complex, at once impressive and deeply flawed. The point is that there may not be a Rawlings anywhere in sight in Nigeria. And that, I daresay, is not a bad thing.

Nigerians don’t need a slaughterfest. We don’t have to shot the men and women who have turned our lives into a horror reality show. A Nigerian Rawlings would spend too much energy and time processing targets. There would be several heads of state, a multitude of former and serving governors, a flood of local government chairmen, and an avalanche of ministers, commissioners, and special assistants. The sheer scale of the slaughter would scar the nation and prove counterproductive.

What purpose would be served by enacting such a gargantuan bloodbath? Is it to establish a deterrent effect? But there are, surely, less expensive ways of achieving this goal. How about prosecuting public officials who betray the public trust? How about ensuring that guilty officials serve long jail terms, like Bode George in a real prison, not in a hospital? How about insisting that the scandal called executive immunity be expunged from the constitution? Nigeria may be the only place where a man who’s committed a crime is shielded from prosecution because he occupies the governor’s seat.
When wiretaps revealed that Governor Rod Blagojevitch of Illinois was seeking to auction off Barack Obama’s Senate seat for cash, officials of the FBI did not wring their hands and say, “Oh, what a sleazy guy, but he’s protected by immunity.” No, they went to the man’s home, arrested him, put handcuffs on him, and then led him away. As he awaited trial, Illinois residents made it clear they didn’t want him running their affairs. They insisted that he resign. They didn’t call in a Rawlings to do the job for them.

How about each citizen deciding to be his or her own Rawlings? How about staunchly defending your vote against usurpers? Or reforming the judiciary, ensuring that only men and women of outstanding ethical funds and legal training are elevated to the bench? With general election nearing, Nigerians are being treated to judicial farce. Take the role the judiciary played in forcing INEC to register one set of political aspirants over another. The ease with which all kinds of miscreants obtained ex parte rulings restraining or compelling the electoral commission, ordering it to act in one way or another bespeaks a system where judges are bought and sold, more or less in the open.
Again, it is humans, not God, creating the mess, seeking to gain political advantage by crooked means – in order to pursue their crooked agenda.

After toiling, groaning and moaning through thirty Mubarak years, the people of Egypt last week said, “Enough’s enough!” Without a Rawlings in sight, the collective resolve, tenacity and dedication of ordinary Egyptians unseated a man who had stolen billions from their country whilst pretending he was God’s gift to the people. Mubarak had finalized plans to hand over the country he’d turned into a virtual shell to his son to proceed with the program of pauperization and exploitation. But the people of Egypt, sans Rawlings, rose up one day and asserted their sovereignty.

At first, Mubarak talked tough, vowed he would not go. But the people, buoyed by the triumph of Tunisians, stood their ground. One day, the embattled Mubarak sent his armed surrogates to whip and shoot the protesters. He must have reckoned that this action would frighten the crowd of protesters. The opposite became true.
The day after the assault, a larger crowd turned up. An American TV reporter interviewed an elderly man. He said he had not cared to join the anti-Mubarak rally until he saw the beating of protesters. “Then I knew I must come out here to join them and show support,” the man said.

Outraged by the assault, Shakira Amin, an Egyptian TV journalist, quit her anchor job in protest. She said she had to identify with her fellow citizens against a despot who required that she ignore the great uprising and instead read a depraved and concocted version of events each night.
A Nigerian friend asked if I thought the events that shook up Tunisia and Egypt – and now convulsing Algeria and Iran – could happen in Nigeria. I paused to weigh a response. In the end, I had to hedge my bets. Yes, Nigerians are capable of reclaiming their much-abused country from the thieftains who run amok, plundering, pillaging and laying waste. But they must first recognize two truths: that the Tunisians and Egyptians did it through sheer determination. If God and Rawlings were at Tahrir Square, they kept an invisible profile and let the Egyptian people do their stuff.
That’s an important lesson for us.

-Sun

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/02/14/nigeria%e2%80%99s-egypt-dreams-by-okey-ndibe/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:53:"rawlings,country,god,people,man,nigerians,day,mubarak";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:11:"description";s:158:"Rawlings fantasy. Simply put, this fantasy bears a hope that we would wake up one sunny day to the emergence of a made-in-Nigeria clone of the former Ghanaian";s:22:"description_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}index,followMy Role As Enemy Of The Statehttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/18/my-role-as-enemy-of-the-state/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/18/my-role-as-enemy-of-the-state/#respondWed, 19 Jan 2011 03:38:55 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=2510By Okey Ndibe ( okeyndibe@gmail.com)-Jan 18, 2011

I arrived at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos on January 8 for what I imagined – or hoped – would be a routine two-week visit to Nigeria. Within moments of arrival, I came to realize that my trip would be anything but normal.

The plain-clothed immigration officer, a lanky fortyish man with a paunchy belly, seemed to linger on my passport. He took one look at the passport and then, face screwed up, inspected my face. Then he did a double take. He looked to his left and raised his left hand, apparently to attract somebody’s attention. The man he wanted to draw to him appeared preoccupied. He then peered once again at the passport and then scoped out my face. He sighed.

“Are you Okey Ndibe?” he asked, as if the matter might be in serious doubt.

“I am Okey Ndibe,” I replied in a tone calculated to dispel any doubt.

“Hold on.” He stood up and shambled a few feet to another man. Bending, he whispered to the other man who then leaned back to catch a glance of me. They exchanged a few more words. The man with my passport returned to me.

“Just get your luggage and come back,” he restated with an air of finality.

I retrieved my luggage and an official of the State Security Service (SSS) led me to the agency’s first floor office. For a moment there was nobody in the room. Then a gangly officer emerged from an inner room and said, “Brother, welcome.” He motioned to a leather couch and I settled in it. He sat at his desk, picked up my passport, and began to make entries on a computer and scribble on a white sheet of paper. Pausing, he asked whether I had another passport. When I said that I carried an American passport as well, he asked for it. He made more entries on the computer as well as a piece of paper.

The phone calls began. The officer exchanged numerous phone calls with a woman – he called her “Ma” – and a man he addressed as “sir.” He’d speak for a moment and then hasten outside the room to finish the conversation. Then, during a lull in the frenetic relay of phone calls, he asked, “Are you a journalist?” I told him I was a professor who wrote a weekly column. He made a call to relay the information, then hurried out.

After some two hours of this puzzling demonstration of state power, I told the officer that he’d not even introduced himself. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it soon,” he answered. He cut a sheet of paper in half and wrote on both of them. Each paper was a receipt of sorts, an acknowledgment that he’d taken away my passports. Handing the papers to me, he instructed that I report on Monday morning at the agency’s office on Kingsway Road, Ikoyi to see the director. The director would decide about the release of my passports.

It was 11:45 p.m. when I walked out of the SSS’s airport office. It was then that the full import of the experience hit me: I’d been cast in the role of enemy of the state. And the incongruity of it all struck me with particular power. No, I couldn’t recall breaking any laws in Nigeria or elsewhere. I had never stolen a kobo of public funds; I had instead called those who did by their proper names – criminals, “thieftains,” nation wreckers. I’d never been an instrument of electoral fraud; rather, I had insisted that Nigerians have a right to credible elections in which their votes count.

It didn’t escape me that scores of innocent Nigerians had perished in recent months, victims of bomb blasts set off by religious and other terror groups. As far as I know, the government, despite its extensive apparati of law enforcement and intelligence – including the SSS – has not succeeded in infiltrating and neutralizing the murderous gangs. And for all the assurance by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, one is not aware that a single perpetrator of these explosive crimes is awaiting prosecution.

The point is, Nigeria is in the throes of a grave and quickly worsening violence. The resources of the state ought to be husbanded to confront this burgeoning virulent threat. But instead of going after those who ambush innocents with bombs, guns and machetes, the SSS diverts itself with intimidating principled commentators on national affairs.

It didn’t matter, in the end, that I considered being put in the role of enemy of the state preposterous; the Nigerian state had decided to designate me an enemy, and that was it. My emotion bypassed disbelief and went from shock to indignation.

When I arrived at the agency’s office on Monday morning, a lawyer friend in tow, I was curious – since nobody had told me at the airport – to learn the particulars of my offence. After signing in at the gate and surrendering our cell phones, we were shown to a waiting room. An hour and a half later, we were ushered to the director’s office. Two men shook hands with us, then the director told my lawyer that the meeting was “a simple matter.” After the lawyer left the room, the director said, “Professor Ndibe, please regard what happened as one of those things that happen in life.” I thought the explanation inadequate.

“A lot of people are convinced that I committed a crime,” I said. “What’s the nature of my crime?”

The director said there was no crime, that the unpleasant encounter at the airport arose from something in the past that the agency should have taken care of.

In December, 2008, I had received three tips – by e-mail and telephone – that the Umaru Yar’Adua regime had ordered that my name be included on an enemy list of critics and activists. We were to be arrested if seen at any Nigerian point of entry. But soon after Mr. Jonathan moved into Aso Rock, a website reported his spokesman as stating that the enemy list had been discarded.

That misleading statement lulled me into letting my guards down. I arrived in Lagos without the precaution of alerting family and friends that I faced the risk of detention.

For me, there are a few points that bear amplification. On a personal note, I was deeply moved by the deluge of messages of solidarity – through statements, e-mails, facebook messages, and phone calls – that came from many groups and individuals, from within and without Nigeria. A refrain of these expressions was an insistence that the maintenance of an enemy list was antithetical to the spirit democracy that Nigeria claims – in the eyes of many, falsely – to practice. Instructive in a perverse way were the intermittent voices that speculated that I must have committed some serious crime, or professed absolute confidence that the SSS must have had solid grounds for briefly detaining me and confiscating my passports.

The director was at pains to assure me that I would never be stopped on future trips. But that assurance, I told him, was not enough – if others were left on the list. At any rate, an editor called me one evening to share startling news. He’d spoken with the director-general of the SSS who insisted that my name was still on the list – and would remain there unless I addressed a petition to the agency’s boss asking that my name be deleted. I immediately rejected the idea. I didn’t write to ask that my name be put on the list; I wasn’t going to beg anybody to remove it.

For me – and this was a point I stressed in interviews with local and foreign reporters – the airport encounter was far from personal. The quality of my citizenship is degraded when any citizen is, without cause, treated wretchedly. If Nigeria is to mean anything, then its enlightened citizens ought to work – must fight – to achieve a country where an SSS official would rebuff an illegal order, where a police officer would not lend himself to the machinations of nation-destroyers, and where an electoral officer would resist instructions to falsify records and announce an impostor as winner.

Without deigning to speak officially, officials of the Jonathan administration privately blamed my brush with the SSS on Yar’Adua’s paranoia. It may or may not be so. But the onus is on Jonathan to state clearly, the sooner the better, that he has renounced the list of “enemies” at the nation’s airports. Let’s send the SSS on a mission that counts: to catch those who work tirelessly, sleeplessly, to make Nigeria a hell of a space. And many of those, as every Okeke, Haruna and Idowu knows, are in the very corridors of power.

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/18/my-role-as-enemy-of-the-state/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:50:"passport,sss,director,list,nigeria,state,enemy,man";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:11:"description";s:157:"passport. He took one look at the passport and then, face screwed up, inspected my face. Then he did a double take. He looked to his left and raised his left";s:22:"description_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}index,followDealing with the nightmare we orderedhttp://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/03/dealing-with-the-nightmare-we-ordered/
http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/03/dealing-with-the-nightmare-we-ordered/#respondTue, 04 Jan 2011 04:13:40 +0000http://newnigerianpolitics.com/?p=1661By Okey Ndibe , Tuesday, January 04, 2011 – Innocent residents of Jos, a once quiescent town, and Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, received gruesome gifts within the last week. On Christmas Eve, several bombs exploded in different parts of Jos, leaving in their wake a death toll as high as eighty, an unknown number of the maimed, the bereaved and the scarred.

As if Jos wasn’t gory enough, the habitués of a “mammy” market abutting a military barrack in Abuja received their own deadly jolt on New Year’s Eve. A series of blasts claimed an unspecified number of lives and gravely wounded. In fact, there’s larger, long-term cost, hard if not impossible to calculate. It lies in the psychological havoc that the bomb blasts have wrought on the nation. How does one assign a value to the air of foreboding that now pervades the body politic, the sheer sense of terror that is bound to sweep the national canvas? Imagine the thousands, perhaps millions, of residents whose nerves are now set on edge, citizens who are utterly uncertain about their very next moment.

That’s the space that Nigerians, high and mighty alike, willy-nilly inhabit. The nightmare this sorry, misconceived and thoroughly mismanaged nation ordered has arrived – again!
Both bloody events – along with other death-spewing explosions or acts of violence in Maiduguri, Yenogoa, and Ibadan – signal a new nightmarish low in Nigeria’s depressing narrative. Nigeria’s record, sadly, is one of taking tragic acts and turning them into the norm. Think about the scourge of kidnapping. It started sporadically in the oil-producing Niger Delta and, at first, targeted expatriates employed in the oil industry.

Then, before anybody could spell ransom, cells of kidnappers sprouted all over the southeast. Unchecked, they have since smothered economic as well as social activities. Few Nigerians would believe that their governments have any antidote for the plague. Before our very eyes, kidnapping has become a fact of life, another specter haunting a much-betrayed, much-abused people. So it is, one fears, with car bombs and other explosives. Rabid sectarian fundamentalists, the economically destitute, and political desperadoes have come together and found a perfect, awful weapon. And Nigeria may never be the same. Nigeria has grown into a perfect kingdom for criminals. No society is immune from crimes. In Nigeria’s case, however, crime is fertilized by two factors. One is the deep involvement of the most prominent citizens in a broad spectrum of crimes. Think about past and present presidents, governors, legislators, ministers, commissioners and local government leaders and their mind-boggling cache of looted funds. Recall the gargantuan gap between the revenues that flow into public treasuries and the paltry sums that are ever accounted for or invested in the public cause.

Another catalyst for crime in Nigeria is the absence of serious deterrence. In other words, whereas most other societies make an effort to identify, prosecute and punish criminals, Nigeria is a virtual crime zone, a place where the privileged not only perpetrate the highest crimes but also ensure that their wizardry at crime never invites sanction of any kind. It’s an election season in Nigeria – and we can expect an exacerbation of violent crimes. For one, despite the creation of agencies like the EFCC and ICPC, aspirants to public office in Nigeria know that their country has one of the lowest thresholds of accountability and transparency in the world. Despite the current legal troubles of former Governor James Onanefe Ibori, most Nigerian governors – as well as the candidates eyeing their posts from the sidelines – can count on facing no prosecutorial sanction whatever for their money laundering and graft.

Nigeria has gone through its one-week charade of hounding former Vice President Dick Cheney for facilitating Halliburton’s $180 million bribery of Nigerian officials. Yet, Nigerian prosecutors have not identified, much less docked, one significant Nigerian recipient of the bribe. Rather than face prosecution, the Nigerians who sold their country to an affiliate of Halliburton are parading their national honors, quaffing and gorging at official functions, and basking in their media-created adulation as “stake [steak] holders.”

The Sultan of Sokoto, Mr. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, recently claimed that politicians masterminded the bomb blasts that shook Jos on the eve of Christmas. That assertion coincides with the conventional wisdom. Mr. Goodluck Jonathan and his aides have said as much. But that conclusion begs the question: Do these political instigators have faces and names? If they do, why is it that the government has not unmasked a single sponsor of these death squads? Why does the Nigerian state continue to send the signal that it’s always sent: that religious zealots who kill indiscriminately in the name of their god would not be made to pay for their crime?
Therein lies a terrible contradiction. Jonathan has vowed that those who ambushed innocent Nigerians with explosives will be found out and tried. But such rhetoric strikes many Nigerians as hollow. Numerous Nigerians perished in a series of car bombs that punctuated – and marred – Nigeria’s 50th anniversary fiesta in Abuja. The SSS made a fanfare of arresting Mr. Raymond Dokpesi, a media entrepreneur who was then running the doomed presidential campaign of former dictator Ibrahim Babangida. Three months later, the state is yet to formally charge anybody with the crimes.

Ply the archives of Nigeria’s religious violence and you’ll read a litany of the kind of assurance Jonathan issued. But the record of action is dismal. A security apparatus that couldn’t tell us who killed former Attorney General Bola Ige is unlikely to figure out who’s planting and detonating bombs in Nigeria. But wait a minute: Perhaps, the security apparatus know who organized Mr. Ige’s assassination. They may well know those behind the blasts in Abuja and Jos. Perhaps, then, they are hamstrung, unable to contemplate the arrest and censure of the highly placed elements implicated in these crimes.
At any rate, there’s been a long build-up to this nightmare of bomb blasts. Thanks to the succession of rapacious criminals and mediocrities that have dominated the affairs of Nigeria, the country now resembles a strafed landscape, the majority of its citizens deprived of humanity dignity, stripped of hope, reduced to living squalid, animalized lives.

With elections looming, nobody should be surprised that the human parasites who suck the nation’s blood would wish to ratchet up the violence. The PDP’s “do-or-die” approach to the 2007 elections – a doctrine established by Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo – has set the stage, one fears, for a much more violent set of elections in 2011. Essentially, what the PDP did in 2007 was steal whatever state or elective post it fancied – and then, affecting a falsely sanctimonious tone, ask those it disinherited not to “overheat the polity” but instead to go to court.

The PDP’s policy was cynical through and through. Obasanjo and his band of mischief-makers reckoned that too many judges were craven, susceptible to inducement. A judiciary whose members are ready agents for sealing and authenticating stolen elections must realize its complicity in the festering violence that attends political contests.
Mr. Jonathan, acting alone, does not have the will, tools or muscle to address the crisis of violence. The challenge is for all Nigerians, and the answer lies in creating a society that’s truly founded on a healthy notion of the rule of law. Nigerians should insist on the enthronement of the principle of equality before the law. The police should be thoroughly professionalized. Police officers ought to be able to arrest a former head of state or governor – without first seeking approval from the president.

Those who embezzle public funds, rig elections, or kill for their divine entities should know that, once caught, they would be made to pay a stiff price. Supreme Court justices ought to have the courage to overturn a purloined presidential election and demand a new, credible election. Those who run the nation, or states or local governments must subject themselves to scrutiny – and realize that they are accountable to those they govern. We must begin to invest public funds in bettering the public space, rather than in fattening some officials’ bank accounts. Unless we combat those who steal the nation into a state of dejection and hopelessness, we risk a Nigeria where bomb blasts are a staple.

(E-mail: okndibe@yahoo.com )

– Sun

]]>http://newnigerianpolitics.com/2011/01/03/dealing-with-the-nightmare-we-ordered/feed/0a:7:{s:4:"lang";s:2:"en";s:8:"keywords";s:66:"nigeria,nigerians,blasts,crimes,nigeria’s,public,crime,elections";s:19:"keywords_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:11:"description";s:159:"Nigeria may never be the same. Nigeria has grown into a perfect kingdom for criminals. No society is immune from crimes. In Nigeria’s case, however, crime is";s:22:"description_autoupdate";s:1:"1";s:5:"title";s:0:"";s:6:"robots";s:12:"index,follow";}Innocent residents of Jos, a once quiescent town, and Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, received gruesome gifts within the last week. On Christmas Eve, several bombs exploded in different parts of Jos, leaving in their wake a death toll as high as eighty, an unknown number of the maimed, the bereaved and the scarred.Dealing with the nightmare we orderedindex,follow